The 2022 election was only the second out of ten going back to 1996 at which Labor won a parliamentary majority, and the result carried with it indications of the party's ongoing decline. A national primary vote of 32.6% was the lowest in the party's modern history, failing to match the 33.4% and 33.3% it recorded as part of seemingly disastrous results in 2013 and 2019, to say nothing of its past historic lows of 40.0% in 1966, 39.6% in 1977 and 38.8% in 1996. The saving grace for Labor was that the Coalition's 35.7% was likewise an historic low, reflecting an ongoing evaporation of the party loyalties that shaped voting behaviour for most of the twentieth century.
On the Coalition side, the blow fell entirely upon the Liberal Party, which lost ten conventionally marginal seats to Labor and as many again to the “teal independents” and Greens, decimating it in the wealthy metropolitan suburbs that had historically been its bedrock. Labor also benefited from a record high 85.7% flow of Greens preferences, contributing to a 52.1% to 47.9% win on the national two-party preferred vote.
The swing varied substantially between states, the most striking case being the 10.6% swing to Labor in Western Australia. This carried an echo of the unprecedented Labor landslide at the state election the previous year, both results largely attributable to the politics of the state's border closure during the pandemic. Labor's 55.0% share of the federal two-party vote was easily its best since the Hawke era, yielding it three Perth marginals plus the normally safe Liberal seat of Tangney. The Liberals also lost Curtin to teal independent Kate Chaney, leaving the party barely hanging on to one seat in metropolitan Perth.
The Liberals were also savaged in seats with large Chinese populations, losing four out of the five seats they held that ranked among the top ten in the country for Chinese language speakers, each being located in Sydney and Melbourne. Out of the two largest states, the Liberals also lost the historic blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins to Labor, together with the conventionally marginal seat of Robertson in the Central Coast region of New South Wales.
At the other end of the scale was Queensland, where the Greens rather than Labor were the beneficiary of a 4.4% two-party swing against the Coalition. The Greens gained Brisbane and Ryan from the Liberals along with Griffith from Labor, reducing Labor to five seats from the six they held after an already disastrous result in 2019. Labor also suffered a 1.6% swing in Tasmania, and retained one of its two seats there by a margin of less than 1%.
Redistributions, by-elections and seat arithmetic
The electoral picture from the 2022 election has since been disturbed by four by-elections, one of which produced an historically unusual gain for the governing party, and redistributions in three states and the Northern Territory. Labor gained the Melbourne seat of Aston at a by-election on April 1, 2023, securing a 3.6% margin in a seat where it fell 2.8% short at the election. Labor was at the peak of its fortunes in the polls at this time, and subsequent by-election results were duly less encouraging. The Gold Coast seat of Fadden swung 2.7% against Labor the following July, and there was a 3.6% swing in the Melbourne fringe seat of Dunkley the following March, despite swings typically being milder at by-elections caused by sitting members' deaths.
The state redistributions resulted from changes in House of Representatives seat entitlements, with Western Australia recovering the sixteenth seat it lost in 2019, while New South Wales and Victoria were down one each to 46 and 38 (the vagaries of rounding causing a one-seat reduction in overall seat numbers to 150). The axe in the two larger states fell in inner metropolitan areas, disrupting the teal independents directly through the abolition of Kylea Tink's seat of Sydney, and indirectly by abolishing Higgins in Melbourne, resulting in a substantial redrawing of Monique Ryan's neighbouring seat of Kooyong. The new seat of Bullwinkel in Western Australia mixes outer suburban and rural areas and has a modest notional Labor margin, though it would likely go conservative at a more typical election than 2022.
Based on post-redistribution estimates of seat margins, Menzies in eastern Melbourne goes from highly marginal Liberal to highly marginal Labor, and the two parties become impossible to separate in the already finely balanced seats of Bennelong and Deakin. Most determinations fractionally favour the Liberals in both, resulting in notional party representation post-redistribution of Labor 77, Coalition 58 and other 15. This does not account for two members the Liberals have lost to resignation following preselection defeats: Moore MP Ian Goodenough, who will contest the last Perth seat remaining to the Liberals since 2022 as an independent, and Russell Broadbent in the regional Victorian seat of Monash.
The post-redistribution margins and party vote shares used on this site are based on determinations that are fully accounted for through the following links, for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory.
Polling and the electoral terrain
The prestige of Australian opinion polling suffered a major blow at the 2019 election, the result of which reversed a consensus among pollsters that Labor would win the two-party vote by around 51.5-48.5. While not a major error by global standards, it marked a jarring departure from a long record of strong performance by election eve polls in Australia, and the unnatural uniformity of the results suggested pollsters were “herding” towards a consensus position for fear of standing exposed. Changes in methods appear to have yielded some improvement, although the Labor primary vote was again overestimated at the 2022 federal election, the actual result of 32.6% comparing with an polling industry consensus of 35% to 36%.
As illustrated on the BludgerTrack aggregate, polling suggests Labor enjoyed a conventional honeymoon in its first year, followed by a progressive decline that did not abate until early 2025. Labor's lead had disappeared entirely by the end of 2024, with Victoria a particular problem area with a swing around 2% more than the country at large. The failure of the Indigenous Voice referendum in October 2023 appeared particularly damaging, polling at the time recording Anthony Albanese's net approval in the negative for the first time since the election. The corresponding ratings for Peter Dutton have fairly consistently been slightly negative, but had become less so than for Albanese by late 2024.
State by state
Two of Labor's seats in New South Wales, Bennelong in Sydney's inner north and Gilmore on the South Coast, are held on negligible margins, with Bennelong becoming notionally Liberal after gaining the western end of abolished North Sydney. Other seats in the state that would fall on swings of up to 4% are Robertson on the Central Coast, Paterson in the Hunter region, and Parramatta in Sydney's middle west. Seats further down the pendulum could go if Labor does badly on the urban fringes (Werriwa on 5.2% and Macquarie on 6.3%) or in the Hunter region (Hunter on 4.9% and Shortland on 6.0%). One of Sydney's four teal seats, North Sydney, has been abolished – of the other three, Zali Steggall's convincing re-election in 2022 suggests she starts favourite in Warringah, but Allegra Spender and Sophie Scamps remain untested as incumbents in Wentworth and Mackellar. Teal-voting territory from North Sydney has been absorbed by Bradfield, where the Liberal member is retiring and teal candidate Nicolette Boele is running again after a strong performance in 2022.
Victoria has developed into a Labor stronghold over the past decade, but polling there suggests the party is set to come off historic heights that yielded it historically conservative seats such as Higgins (now abolished) and Corangamite (now seemingly secure for Labor on a post-redistribution margin of 7.9%). Labor has an uphill task in defending its by-election gain of Aston, and the redistribution has slashed the 6.8% margin by which it gained the Chinese community stronghold of Chisholm to 2.8%. The redistribution also leaves Labor more vulnerable to the rising challenge of the Greens in the inner northern Melbourne seat of Wills. With a Labor margin of 3.7%, McEwen on Melbourne's northern fringe is susceptible to a backlash among mortgage payers. Two teal independents are defending two seats won in 2022: Monique Ryan's job in Kooyong is complicated by redistribution, whereas Zoe Daniel's seat of Goldstein has undergone only modest change. In the country, teal candidate Alex Dyson is trying again in Wannon after coming within 3.9% in 2022.
Queensland was the crucible of Australian elections for the first two decades of the century, but Labor's win in 2022 despite gaining no seats there suggests its importance has diminished. Given Labor's low base in the state, it might harbour hopes of gains to balance losses elsewhere: an interesting prospect given that Peter Dutton's 1.7% margin in Dickson is the narrowest in the state. However, Labor has higher hopes of overhauling the 3.4% margin in the Far North Queensland seat of Leichhardt, where Liberal veteran Warren Entsch is retiring. Labor's tightest margin is a seemingly solid 5.2% in the Ipswich region of Blair, but the LNP appears at least hopeful of accounting for it. It also remains to be seen if the Greens can defend their three seats in inner Brisbane, and if they face a greater threat from Labor or the LNP. Labor won the two-party count over the LNP in all three seats in 2022, by margins of 2.4% in Ryan, 4.4% in Brisbane and 11.1% in Griffith.
Labor's 55.0% two-party vote in Western Australia in 2022 was around 10% better than the party's federal norm over the previous two decades, reflected in post-distribution Labor margins of 9.1% in Pearce, 9.6% in Swan and 10.7% in Hasluck: Perth seats that had largely or entirely eluded the party over the previous two decades. While the Liberals are hoping for a recovery off their miserably low base, polling and a discouraging result at the March 8 state election suggests it will not be on a scale to return them to competitiveness in these seats. It's a different story with Labor's biggest prize of 2022, the normally safe Liberal seat of Tangney, where the post-redistribution margin is 2.6%. The new seat of Bullwinkel on Perth's eastern fringe has a notional Labor margin of only 3.0%, and Labor lacks the advantage of a defending sitting member. The seat looms as a three-cornered contest, with former state party leader Mia Davies running for the Nationals.
There are few marginals among the ten seats in South Australia, but Labor was able to increase its tally to six in 2022 through its first win in the southern Adelaide seat of Boothby since 1949. Together with the broader turn away from the Liberals in inner metropolitan seats, this was aided by the retirement of Liberal incumbent Nicolle Flint, who is seeking a comeback at the coming election. Labor may yet harbour hopes of accounting for a 0.5% Liberal margin in Sturt in Adelaide's inner east, where a teal independent could also be competitive. The once Liberal seat of Mayo appears secure now for Rebekha Sharkie, effectively an independent but formally a member of the Centre Alliance, which originated with former Senator Nick Xenophon.
The three seats of central and northern Tasmania have all changed hands frequently over the decades, but the Liberals have lately been in the ascendant. The one seat remaining to Labor, Lyons, was retained against a 4.3% Liberal swing in 2022 by a margin of 0.9%. Labor evidently fears for its hold on the seat, having encouraged sitting member Brian Mitchell to make way for former state party leader Rebecca White. The Northern Territory produced mixed signals in 2022: Labor consolidated its hold on the traditionally marginal Darwin-based seat of Solomon, while being brought within 0.9% of defeat by a 4.5% swing in Lingiari, which covers the remainder (redistribution has increased the margin to 1.6%). Labor appears secure in the three seats of the Australian Capital Territory, despite rising Greens support and the emergence of a teal independent candidate in the seat of Bean.